The Bog Baby - Hardcover

Willis, Jeanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375861769 ISBN 13: 9780375861765

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade, 2009

Synopsis

Do you believe in Bog Babies?
If you don’t, you will!

When two small sisters go fishing in a magic pond, they find something much better than a frog or a newt. They find a Bog Baby. Small and blue, with wings like a dragon, the girls decide to take him home with them and keep him a secret.

But the Bog Baby is a wild thing, and when he gets sick, the girls turn to their mother for help. She teaches them the greatest lesson of all: sometimes if you really love something, you have to let it go.

This magical book about the wonder children feel for the wild creatures around them will appeal to every child’s imagination and love of the outdoors.

2008 Booktrust Early Years Preschool Award Winner

About this title

About the Author:

Jeanne Willis has written more than 80 titles, including picture books, novels, and television scripts. She has also won numerous awards, including the Sheffield Children’s Book Award and the Silver Smarties Prize. Her teen novel, Naked Without a Hat, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award in 2004. She often takes inspiration from dreams and interesting conversations with strangers. She lives in England.

Gwen Millward studied illustration in Edinburgh and now spends all of her time painting and writing stories for children about her favorite subject, beasts. Her first book, Guess What I Found in Dragon Wood, was published in April 2007. She lives in England.

From School Library Journal:

PreSchool-Grade 3—The narrator, now a mother herself, tells about an event in her childhood. She and her sister break a rule and get caught in a lie. It starts when they go fishing alone in the springtime bog and catch a bog baby. They want to share their love for their new pet with their mother, but they just can't tell her where they've been. Like budding cryptozoologists, they describe each part of the little round creature with wings "no bigger than daisy petals," and create for it a habitat, a bucket filled with shells, gravel, and water. The glorious illustrations reveal a lush dreamscape of a backyard flush with tendrils, bluebells, Queen Anne's lace, birch trees, cherry trees, dragonflies, ladybugs, and more, all delicately and minutely drawn, and painted in watercolors. The child-voiced, economical narrative transports readers into the squelches and squeaks of tromping through the mud and spring plants, and straight into heartbreak when the beloved bog baby gets sick and hides under shells. Luckily readers can venture vicariously into the twilight bog when the sisters return their pet to its natural environment, and again when the narrator's child, the next generation, joyfully discovers that their sacrifice resulted in the proliferation of this dubious species.—Sara Paulson-Yarovoy, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City END

About this edition

• Publisher: Schwartz & Wade
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0375861769
• ISBN 13: 9780375861765
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Millward Gwen